


heaven if you sent us down, we could build a playground (for the sinners to play as saints)

by stardustgirl



Series: i’m a fool with a curse and a crush (he’s a teenager in love) [2]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: (and the consequences thereof (which aren’t always good)), (as in ozai is homophobic and blames it on religion so zuko is Very Confused), (bc ozai’s That Kind Of Dad), (but like. with an actual therapist who is not zhao.), (very briefly) - Freeform, (yeah its as cursed as you think it is), Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Anxiety, As in like, Bad Ending, Beating, Child Abuse, Closeted Character, Coming Out, Coronavirus is mentioned, Dark, Depression, Dissociation, Dysfunctional Family, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Family Issues, Gay Zuko (Avatar), Heavy Angst, Homophobia, Hurt Zuko (Avatar), Implied Sokka/Zuko (Avatar), Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Obligatory quarantine fic, Ozai (Avatar) Being a Terrible Parent, Religious Conflict, Self-Hatred, Suicidal Thoughts, Texting, Therapist Zhao (Avatar), Unhappy Ending, Unreliable Narrator, Zuko (Avatar) Angst, Zuko (Avatar) Has Issues, Zuko (Avatar) Has PTSD - Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Zuko (Avatar) Needs Therapy, Zuko (Avatar) Needs a Hug, Zuko (Avatar)-centric, Zuko's Scar (Avatar), and it’s the reason for the quarantine?, conversion therapy, it exists - Freeform, just a general warning, legit this fic is just. me venting. and also abt how much I hate quarantine lol, like I’m serious this fic is v dark, not at all, there’s also like very slightly, this is barely edited sorry but yeah, this is...not a happy fic, vent fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-15
Updated: 2020-07-15
Packaged: 2021-03-04 18:35:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,197
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25270987
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stardustgirl/pseuds/stardustgirl
Summary: A small part of him hopes those thoughts are wrong, that there is a place for him somewhere.  But Zuko stopped believing in heaven the day his father took an iron to his face.(Or; Zuko, religion, and homophobia.  Oh, and quarantine too.)
Relationships: Azula & Ozai & Zuko, Ozai & Zuko (Avatar), Sokka/Zuko (Avatar)
Series: i’m a fool with a curse and a crush (he’s a teenager in love) [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1833397
Comments: 28
Kudos: 405





	heaven if you sent us down, we could build a playground (for the sinners to play as saints)

**Author's Note:**

> Okay so this fic is like. Just one big trigger warning just a heads up :)
> 
> TW: Check the tags. There’s...a lot in this. Though if i missed a warning for something, let me know!!

He’s trapped inside of himself.

Zuko sits on the bed, staring blankly at the wall, and lets everything fade. The bright screen of his phone, the faint noises of his father in the kitchen, of Azula watching something in her room. He feels himself going numb, vaguely reminds himself to get up, to do _something_ to feel _anything,_ but nothing happens. He’s walking a narrow, spiral path to begin with, and he can’t help but watch in slow motion as he slips off.

He plummets.

* * *

He heads downstairs at some point—he hardly knows when; time has been irrelevant since this whole mess started anyway and he vaguely stopped caring about online assignments ages ago.

He gets some cereal, tastes the first three bites before it falls apart into tasteless cardboard in his mouth, and his mind shuts off again, thoughts he _knows_ are his father’s circling like scavenging coyotes around his mind.

_You’re wrong._

His grip on the spoon tightens, the metal digging into his hand. Mechanically, he forces another bite.

_You’re wrong._

He thinks of _him,_ of the way he laughs at his own jokes and at Zuko’s own and how he _knew_ how bad Zuko’s father was and still didn’t care and how he loved blasting The Smiths on full volume whenever he drove to or from school.

Zuko hates that he knows all of these things.

* * *

He gets a text, later. It’s still the same day, he thinks, but he doesn’t know for sure. _did you see the news about school???_

 _I’m going back in person,_ he writes back.

 _I won’t survive another three months stuck here, in my own mind, in my own house, otherwise,_ he doesn’t write.

He shuts his phone off, even after they reply, _yea i prob am too but idk yet and idk if Katara is or not either or what Aang and Toph and Suki are doing_

Zuko climbs up to his bedroom, sits on the bed, and stares at the wall in silence again.

* * *

Dinner is together. Azula’s texting practically everybody—about _what,_ Zuko doesn’t know—and his father’s gaze is hard on Zuko’s own face. He’s far past the point of flinching, so he simply keeps his head down, and picks at his food.

“You failed a quiz,” Father says.

“I’m sorry, sir,” he says quickly, but Father’s already shaking his head, gaze dark.

“If you were, then you wouldn’t have failed it after failing the last one. You’re a disgrace.”

Azula chuckles to herself, and though when Zuko shoots her a glance her gaze is on her phone, he knows it was on him only seconds before. He resigns himself to nodding.

 _I’m sorry,_ he thinks again, but this time he’s thinking it to _him,_ the one with the wry smile always accompanying him doing something stupid or a vine reference that he’s pulled from the bowels of both their minds. _I’m sorry I can’t be enough for anyone. I’m sorry that I’m not brave enough to defy him for you._

* * *

_zuko and momo,_ a notification from the group chat reads when he opens his phone after dinner. He slides up to see it’s a video, a sugar glider just like Aang’s that chirps shrilly as it flies into the face of a guy on his phone. Zuko smiles, the first in several days he thinks, and hearts both his message and the post before clicking his phone off again. He grabs his sketchbook and a pencil, staring blankly at the cover for what feels like hours before finally setting it down again.

 _You’re wrong,_ he thinks, and he falls just a bit further off that spiraling path to the lowest parts of his soul.

* * *

His father isn’t religious in the sense you’d think of upon hearing the word. Ozai is religious in that he pays his dues, attends for Christmas and Easter and Good Friday and Ash Wednesday and Palm Sunday and all the other days he needs to, can never be caught using the Lord’s name unless he’s beating his son in the privacy of their sheltered life. He is also religious, however, in how he reminds his son every night at dinner:

“If you value your virtue, then you will not think of _that._ ”

He tells himself that his father simply means the reason that he’s _wrong,_ that his father simply means the best for him, that his father simply means the righteous fear Zuko himself should have of playing into the devil’s hands. But Zuko stopped believing in heaven the day his father took an iron to his face and told him he wouldn’t be returning to school until he rid himself of thoughts of _that._

Azula is religious in the sense that she wears her cross and attends slightly more than them, but every time she returns he sees her eyes are empty and wonders if she is just as _wrong_ as he is.

 _If your church thinks it’s so wrong,_ he had asked Zuko once, _then why were we made this way?_

Zuko hadn’t known how to answer.

* * *

Zuko says grace, and eats without tasting.

He wants to die.

“I got a 90 on my calc quiz, sir,” he says at the end of the meal. His voice is quiet, wavering.

Father only grunts. “Do better. And _then_ come and talk to me.”

 _You’re_ wrong, his mind screams, and Zuko wants to curl up and die.

* * *

_u down to FT??_

He glances at the text, staring for a long moment before sighing silently. _Give me 5 min._

Zuko attempts to look functional, brushing his teeth for the first time that day and finger-combing through his hair before pulling a shirt on that smells slightly less than the others. He sticks his ear buds in and hits the FaceTime button.

Mere seconds after, he picks up, grinning widely. Zuko forces a tired smile onto his own face.

“ _Hey Zuko! How’re you doing buddy?_ ”

“Good. Wish quarantine was over though; I hate it,” he says. Only half of it’s a lie.

“ _Yeah, me too. I was supposed to be going to a concert next week, but, well, you know how it is._ ” Zuko nods. He does.

“Did they give you a refund at least?”

“ _Nah, but they gave me free advance tickets to their next tour back. And Katara said she doesn’t like their music anymore, so if_ you _wanted to go…?_ ”

Zuko knows which concert he’s referring to without asking. And he knows that Katara likely only said she wasn’t interested in a vain attempt to get them to go out with each other.

“I’ll see,” he says instead. “Dunno about my plans yet with the whole situation going on right now.”

He nods, sighing. “ _Yeah, yeah. Me too, buddy._ ”

They talk about mindless things, and the whole time Zuko is biting his tongue to keep from spilling out that _I love you_ and that _you’re perfect_ and that _I wish the world was different so we wouldn’t be a sin._

Sinning would be okay, though, he thinks, if it was with him.

* * *

He sits down with his laptop, logging onto the portal his therapist uses. He can’t help but tap out an anxious rhythm as he waits for the telltale _ding._ It chimes, and he swallows back his anxiety and forces a neutral expression on his face as the other camera loads.

“ _How are you feeling today, Zuko?_ ”

“Fine, sir.”

“ _And how are you feeling about boys?_ ”

Zuko’s hesitation is only a moment, but it says enough. The man sighs loudly, shaking his head.

“ _Zuko, your father and I only want the_ best _for you. Can’t you understand that?_ ”

Zuko nods. Dr. Zhao sighs again.

“ _Don’t you want to just be_ normal? _You can’t live your whole life liking boys, Zuko. It’s wrong. It’s_ disgusting. You’re _wrong for thinking you can._ You’re _disgusting for thinking it’s okay._ ”

_I know._

This is a new record for the persistence of the presence of civility in their discussions, he realizes distantly. Not that it matters much in the end.

“ _Did you hear me, Zuko? I said you’re_ disgusting _for being that way._ ” When he’s still silent, Dr. Zhao’s eyes narrow. “ _Answer me._ ”

“I am, sir. I am disgusting.”

“ _I’m glad we agree on that._ ”

The conversation continues much the same, with his therapist periodically pausing to make sure Zuko is absorbing all of it. And he is. Ozai-Sozin’s-Perfect-Son-Zuko absorbs every bit of it with rapt attention.

Even though the _real_ Zuko, the Ozai-Sozin’s-Disgraceful-Offspring-Zuko is running circles in his mind, screaming _I am not straight I am not straight I am not straight._

He silences those screams with fingernails digging crescents into his palms.

At the end of the session, Dr. Zhao asks, “ _And how are your father’s_ treatments _making you feel?_ ”

_Like I want to die._

“I can tell they’re helping, sir. I think they’ve helped enough we can stop.”

The therapist lets out a soft, dark chuckle, that even through his earbuds sends chills down his spine. “ _I’ll discuss it with your father. Goodbye, Zuko._ ”

The session ends, and Zuko closes his computer with a sigh, putting his face in his hands.

The spiral doesn’t end, it seems, because he’s found an even deeper part of his soul to fall into.

* * *

Father comes into his room the next evening. Zuko removes his earbuds, shifting to sit up straighter.

“Dr. Zhao told me you wanted to stop,” he says without preamble. “He said you ‘thought it was working.’”

“I do think it’s working, sir,” Zuko whispers.

_I don’t._

Father laughs, the sound harsh and cold. “Only _children_ say they think they’ll behave better if they get ungrounded, Zuko. Don’t you want to be an _adult?_ ”

_No. I only want to die. There is no heaven for me Here, or After, so what’s the point in trying for one?_

“Yes, sir,” he says instead, eyes closed.

“Then get on the floor, and allow me to remind you exactly how you _should_ feel about boys.”

He takes his hoodie off before he gets off the bed, tossing it across the room. It’s one of his favorites, a band one _he_ gave Zuko though he told his father and Azula it was a gift from Katara, and Zuko doesn’t want to get any more blood on it.

Zuko gets on his hands and knees, biting his tongue enough to bleed as his father removes his belt and raises it high, high, high above Zuko’s back.

 _You’re wrong you’re wrong you’re wrong,_ he chants mentally. _You’re wrong you’re wrong you’re wrong._

A small part of him hopes those thoughts _are_ wrong, that there _is_ a place for him somewhere, maybe not After but while he’s still Here and still suffering, but Zuko knows that if his father has his way he won’t ever reach that place.

He has a tendency to shut down during his father’s beatings, so though he feels the first few blows and bites back his whimpers appropriately, all too soon his mind detaches and drifts away.

He thinks of what he’ll say to Uncle Iroh when he’s able to see him again without fears of passing the virus to him by sheer accident. He thinks of his uncle’s smile, of the way he’ll squeeze Zuko’s shoulder so he knows that he won’t ever be harmed under Iroh’s roof. He thinks of the Pai Sho they’ll play and the tea they’ll drink and—

And Zuko _breaks._

He sobs, openly, as the belt continues to hiss down with a snap that leaves his skin torn and bloody, because for all he knows this quarantine will last another three months and he won’t see Iroh _or_ his friends until he’s a broken, bloody mess of a boy who fears touch and raised voices more than a cat fears water.

 _You were broken before all of this, though, and you_ know it.

He can’t hear Father’s words through the breaths heaving out of his own collapsing, stuttering lungs, but he knows what they are, he knows of the truths they hiss, that they are reminding Zuko just how horrible he is because he is _wrong, wrong, wrong,_ and that Mother left _because_ of his wrongness.

When Father finishes, absently cleaning the still-wet blood from his belt with one of Zuko’s shirts crumpled on the floor, he kneels down beside his son.

“If you had any sort of decency, you’d figure out a way to make yourself _better,_ ” Father says.

Zuko hardly hears him leave, the only sign of his departure the shirt being tossed back onto the floor beside his head and the distant click of his door’s latch. A long-repressed thought resurfaces.

_Go to Azula. See if she’ll help you._

He can’t, he knows. Father had threatened to _really_ kill him—and to hurt Azula, too—if she ever learns just how _wrong_ her brother is.

Sobs shaking his body, Zuko allows himself to remain facedown on the floor, welts and strips of broken skin along his back stinging in the cool air as he takes his final step off of the spiral downward.

_I’m wrong, and there’s nothing I can do about it._

**Author's Note:**

> Just want to do a really quick disclaimer here: I am in no way condoning any of this (in case that wasn’t obvious aha). Struggling with both religion and LGBT issues is extremely difficult, and though they can coexist, that’s not an option for everyone. Uhhhh also stay safe guys.


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